Let’s begin the story by placing blame squarely where it belongs: Congressman Mark Green (R, TN), a former Tennessee state senator before succeeding Senator Marsha Blackburn in her House district, ran for and won reelection to a fourth two-year term – then announced his resignation shortly afterward, serving only half a year and vacating the seat in July, 2025, creating the need for a December 2 special election.
In addition to leaving his district unrepresented for six months while the special election was held, and unnecessarily leaving the Republican House with an even narrower margin than it already was for that period… this raised the very real possibility that the Republican Party might lose the seat.
Even though it’s considered to be a safe, conservative district (approximately R+10), you never really know for sure with special elections. One party may be more motivated than the other; it’s an unusual time and people may not be “in the voting mood.” And most importantly, the entire country has the ability to focus on pouring money, resources, and media coverage into this one single district, disproportionately in comparison to a normal, nationally shared election day.
So it is that, regardless of the district, it’s easier to lose a special election than to win one.
As the election approached, just as one would expect, the Democrat electorate seemed motivated, the polling looked promising for the Democrat (a far left state assemblywoman), and some Republicans seemed worried, or at least, the press said they were.
The mass media, in fact, hyped up the idea that this could be one of those exciting underdog campaigns that sets the stage for the future, overturns past norms, and ushers in a glorious left-wing realignment. Whether that was really ever likely or not, those were the talking points, and there was enough reasonably tight polling that one could manage to look reasonable saying so.
As election day approached, there were polls saying that Republican Matt Van Epps and Democrat Aftyn Behn were within two or three points of each other. Van Epps was in the lead, of course – it’s a Republican district and he’s a current official in the Governor’s cabinet. But the polls were close enough to inspire the leftist press to be excited.
Then came election day.
And election night.
It wasn’t close.
It’s a ten point Republican district that President Trump won by 22 points, and Van Epps was winning by five points throughout the evening.
The press and the punditry were prepared for that. They didn’t let it discourage them. They started filing news stories about how he was only winning by five points in a district that should have been a ten point spread, so surely that shows the weakness of the Republican Party, the incumbent President, and the conservative movement, right?
Even though the Republican won, the press could still use a five point Republican victory to argue a Democrat wave, a Left-wing insurgency, a statement of dissatisfaction with the Republican party. All because Van Epps theoretically should have had a ten point spread.
But even that narrative fell apart by midnight, when the numbers continued to pile up for Matt Van Epps.
By the time the dust cleared, it turned out that he had won his first congressional election by nine points.
There was nothing close about it.
With a nine point spread, the only honest conclusion is that the district was never really in play at all; the polls showing a tight race were wrong, and this solidly Republican district did exactly what you’d expect: it elected a solid Republican candidate.
But you won’t see that story filed in the mainstream media anywhere.
Here’s what we learn from studying the press on these results:
- If Republicans win a close race, they’ll print the margin, and say “Republicans won in a squeaker.”
- And if the Republican wins in a landslide, they just won’t print the margin at all, and they’ll say “Republicans won in a squeaker” anyway.
Sound dishonest?
Well, of course it is. What else can we expect?
By the morning after election day, it was difficult to find a news story that mentioned the actual vote counts or percentage split at all. Printing that the final tally was 53.9% to 45.1% – essentially a nine point difference – would give away the truth that it was never neck-and-neck at all.
So the press just runs headlines they planned to run anyway, like “Republican Matt Van Epps Averts Democrat Upset” and “Slimmer than Expected Margin in Tennessee Special Election.”
If they mentioned the margin, such headlines would look preposterous, so they just don’t mention the actual margin at all, and they allow the reader to imagine splits of 51 to 49 or even 50.5 to 49.5.
You can’t catch the press lying if they leave the lie unstated, and they just leave the reader’s own imagination to do their dirty work for them. Clever little vermin, aren’t they?
This USA Today article is a good example. Filed midday on Wednesday when the final margin had already been well known for almost twelve hours, this piece cited several numbers: polling that put the candidates within 2 or 3 points before the election, and the fact that President Trump won the district by 22 points a year ago, and called the results a “tight margin of victory” – without ever actually announcing that the final results were a 9 point spread. The article even says smarmily that Van Epps won “by single digits in a district that Trump won by 22 points.”
Sure, a nine-point spread is, technically, a single digit victory. But it’s hardly what a reader thinks of when you say the term “single digit victory,” now, is it?
I know this may sound like making a mountain out of a molehill, but I really don’t think it is.
I think, rather, that this is a perfect example of what the mainstream media does all the time, day in and day out, whenever they think they can get away with it:
Push the narrative, and support it with facts when there are facts that can support it… but then when the facts don’t support it at all, just push the narrative anyway, and leave any evidence to the contrary out of the story entirely.
As much as you may hate the mass media… you don’t hate them enough.
Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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